Legacy of a Monarch- an American Journey
Author Jan Sumner
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Jan Sumner and JaDan Publishing
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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DEDICATION
It’s always a little tricky dedicating a book. Mothers, fathers, wives, best friends, contributors, etc, the list can get long and tangled. Here, for instance, I could pick any number of family members who contributed to my sanity and offered never-ending support through this project. And, certainly there were individuals in Byron’s life who were deserving of such a tribute.
The more I thought about it, however, the more obvious the choice became. The picture in the front cover says it all. Byron is farthest left in the second row. You would only know that because I just told you. Who then, are the rest of the men and boys in the picture? We don’t know. Oh, we could not find out, probably, with extensive research, but that’s the point.
The men pictured represent the hundreds of Negro League players who played anywhere from one game to thousands of games…and no one knows who they were. That’s who this book is dedicated to. The nameless faces and jerseys that criss-crossed this country playing the game they loved. Putting up with hardship and racism we can only imagine.
Sadly, most have passed on, left only to family memories and archival pictures and articles. Still unknown, but staring hauntingly out at us from faded worn out paper. These are the men of Negro League baseball…the ghosts of an era gone by.
I was honored to write this book and I salute them one and all!
Jan Sumner
FOREWORD
By President Bill Clinton
This book will introduce you to an exceptional man who lived during a fascinating time. Byron Johnson is the grandson of a slave who overcame financial and social obstacles on his way to a college degree and a life devoted to education and to making the world a better place.
Byron Johnson grew up in Little Rock, in a segregated society, getting a college degree at a time when many institutions of higher education were closed to minorities. He became a biology teacher and was so dedicated to helping young people that he turned down the first offer he received to play professional baseball,
Byron became a great athlete in the Negro Leagues, known throughout the baseball world for his peerless defensiveness skills. He played for the Kansas City Monarchs, alongside legends like Satchel Paige and Buck O’Neil.
Then, while still in good enough shape to play many more years, Byron left his beloved baseball career to return to teaching. He also served in World War II, fighting to protect the freedoms that his country did not fully grant him.
Byron Johnson spent his life striving for greatness, both athletically and intellectually, and striving to instill it in others. He was a pioneer, paving the way for African Americans to enjoy equal rights and equal opportunities. Without Negro Leaguers like Byron demonstrating the extent of their skills, Major League Baseball would have taken much longer to integrate. Without educators like Byron, our nation’s young people would not have had desperately needed role models to mold their characters and challenge their intellects. I am grateful for his inspiring life.
President Bill Clinton
February 2005
INTRODUCTION
By Don Baylor
Byron Johnson is a gentle man with an open hand and easy smile. Extremely approachable, he has a gracious manner and dignified demeanor.
He is not angry; he is not bitter.
What is obvious is that he is giving. And what he did was endure. Through their intensity on the playing field, and their ability to endure, the men of the Negro Leagues steadily chipped away at the wall of baseball segregation. In so doing, they paved the way for people like me. As a major league baseball player from the generation of the 1970s, and as a major league manager of the 21st century, the Negro Leagues’ history and ballplayers have inspired me throughout my career. I am filled with pride at their enduring, even while recognition of the significance of their efforts has been a “long time coming.” Their contribution to the modern game has been too often overlooked and undervalued. Their determination, however, lives on through me and all other ballplayers of color that have benefited from the continued success of professional baseball.
In the world of strict racial segregation in which he was born, begun in Jim Crow Arkansas, the struggle and primary goal for “Mex” Johnson and his contemporaries was simply to reach the playing field, and to show that their physical abilities matched those of their white counterparts. By now it’s infamously well documented that disputing, or even worse, daring to attempt to prove wrong, the commonly held belief that black ballplayers were incapable of competing for any position on the field brought derision, scorn and often violence. The struggle that began more than 130 years ago to be recognized on the basis of merit and on a “level playing field”; continues well into the 21st century. Even as racial barriers to athletic participation have come tumbling down over the past 50 years, while encouraged by the accomplishments, we must remain vigilant about the challenges that lie ahead. As one of a handful of African-American managers, I assume this responsibility with sincere humility, knowing what sacrifices others, especially Negro Leaguers, made to give me the opportunity to play, let alone manage in the major leagues.
The unfolding of “Mex” Johnson’s life is truly a testament to the human spirit when faced with adverse circumstances and rigid barriers. As a grandson of a slave, Johnson embodied the strides that African-Americans had made during the span of two generations. A husband, scholar, citizen, teacher, soldier, father and two-sport athlete, Johnson forced his peers to think of him in multiple ways. His willingness to serve stands out as the most impressive theme running throughout his remarkable life. As a World War II veteran, joining the fight for freedom in a foreign nation (and liberties he did not enjoy in his own home state) speaks to his character and enduring hope for a better America. And, as a person who believed to his core in “giving back,” Byron rarely shunned an opportunity to transfer his knowledge to the persons most in need of a role model: our youth. He firmly understood that the permanent legacy of the African-American athlete would lie in our ability to teach life lessons to these young men and women for whom our stature commands so much of their attention.
As an individual in the public eye and one of the caretakers of a legacy laid down by trailblazers of Mex Johnson’s era, I continue to absorb their lessons with the awareness of the need to keep this history alive for younger generations. And, as a coach and manager, the knowledge of this history keeps me equally committed to impressing younger players of the power our prestige can exert as a positive influence. I, too, believe in giving back.
It’s important to me that we honor Byron Johnson and the men like him by listening to his story. We owe these men a debt of gratitude and we all need to pay attention. I’m sure Byron would agree, so we can “pass it on.”
Don Baylor
Oct. 4, 2004
LEGACY OF A MONARCH
Chapter 1
In 1911, ragtime composer Scott Joplin composed Treemonisha, an opera extolling the virtues of education for black Americans. It was read in Harlem in 1916, without the use of an orchestra or scenery. With the decline of ragtime and Joplin’s health, it would not be premiered until sixty-one years later in January of 1972 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ty Cobb won the first MVP award in the American League, Honus Wagner won the National League batting crown by one point, and Cy Young beat Pittsburgh 1-0 for his 511th and last career win. The son of a minister, Andrew Foster, went into partnership with John Schorling, the son-in-law of Charles Comiskey, and arrange for a black baseball team to play in old Chicago White Sox Park. Andrew “Rube” Foster would rename them the Chicago American Giants and a dynasty was born. It was a team that would become a dominant force in Negro League baseball for years, and one Byron “Mex” Johnson would play against twenty-seven years later.
The house was on the edge of town, next to a field with ditches and pine trees…lots of pine trees. It was built by his father, Joseph, so that Byron might be born at home. One of nine children, he was the youngest and the only child in the family that would make his earthly appearance at 4423 W. 16th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas.
“I came along and rounded out the mighty Johnson family,” Byron said proudly. “We were a happy family because we all loved each other. Even though my sisters were married and gone, they would still come back to see us. I cherished those days we were all together.” Whether it was the fact he was born there, grew up there or maybe it was those old pine trees, but this was and would always be home to Byron.
His father was a painter, born in 1878 outside Montgomery, Alabama. Little is known about that side of the family other than his grandparents were Coffee Lewis and Sara Johnson and they lived out most of their lives in Alabama. But throughout his life his father would play a major role in Byron’s existence. “Who was really the best to me was my dad. He was my hero, especially after my mother died.” His mother, Elizabeth Golden, was born in Batesville, Arkansas as the daughter of a slave. Her mother, Betty Golden, kept house and tended to the children of rich white families. Her father was a white doctor in Batesville who, although never admitting to his paternity, was nonetheless active in their lives.
The neighborhood Byron grew up in was predominantly black, with a sprinkling of white families. For the most part everyone got along, as long as they knew their place. Little Rock was definitely a southern segregated city. Byron would learn over the years what everybody’s place was. One of these white families lived directly behind the Johnsons’.
Horatius was the first-born son in the Johnson family, but they called him “Bud”. Bud raised chickens, as many did back then. “People back then, in that part of Little Rock, had horses, a few cows, some hogs, and everyone had chickens,” Byron recalled. Bud had just gotten home from World War I and set about tending to his chickens. “I was glad to see him. I had just broken my arm trying to jump on the swing in the front yard.”
Somehow one of Bud’s chickens got into the yard of the white lady who lived behind them. She apparently didn’t have, didn’t like, and wanted nothing to do with chickens, so she went after it. She hit it in the head with a dirt clod, but didn’t kill it. While it was squawking and flopping around on the ground hurt, Bud couldn’t contain himself. He leapt over the fence, grabbed the chicken, and regrettably (for Bud) slapped the white woman. Mr. Finn, an elderly white man in the neighborhood, caught wind of the incident and vowed that Bud would pay for his indiscretion. Joseph Johnson put Bud on a train out of town that same night. Byron would not see Bud again until he was a grown man playing baseball for the Kansas City Monarchs thirty years later.
His father, whom Byron affectionately called “Papa”, was a house painter by trade. His mother was a teacher. “Mama was a schoolteacher, and she taught in a small school house just outside of Little Rock. The school house was no bigger than the small houses around it. She drove a horse and buggy to get there, and sometimes she’d take me with her. I remember that ole horse was name Charlie. She taught first through twelfth grade…all in that little house.”
Byron had five brothers, all of whom painted at one time or another, as per Papa’s penchant. Horatius (Bud) was the oldest, followed by Louis, then Clayborn, then Mark and Earl. “Louis was a real likeable fellow,” Byron recalled. “He was real easy to be around. I remember right after he died, I was standing on 18th and Vine in Kansas City, when I was playing for the Monarchs, when an old man came up to me looking like he’d seen a ghost. He looked at me and said, ‘Lord, I heard Mr. Johnson had passed, but when I looked out my window and saw you I’d have sworn I was looking right at him.’ He had mistaken me for Louis and came down to see.”
Clayborn was next in line and became somewhat the historian of the family. He was a loner, studious and liked to keep to himself. Although quiet and reserved, he was always there with a helping hand. “When they weren’t going to let me graduate from Wiley because I still owed some money, Clayborn sent what I needed. We called him Doc.”
Next was brother Mark. His full name was Mark Theodore Roosevelt Johnson; they called him “Tootie”. He, too, was quiet, didn’t say much, but didn’t put up with much either. “I heard he was in the barber shop one day, when some fellow started talking out of place to a lady who was in there. The way I heard it, whatever he was saying wasn’t right, but no one would do anything about it. Next thing anybody knew Mark had gotten up out of his chair, walked over to the man and flattened him, then went back to his chair, sat down and never said a word. Yeah, that was Mark. We didn’t look alike when we were young, but when we got in our sixties, we started looking a lot like Papa.”
Then came Earl; they called him “Possum”. He and Byron looked so much alike people constantly got them confused. They would share some good and some sad times together.
His three sisters were Sadie, the oldest, whom he doesn’t remember a lot about because as she was married and gone when Byron was born. “The thing I most remember about Sadie, was the wide gray streak in her hair. It ran from her forehead down the full length of her hair. She also made me an uncle when I was still a little baby. Her oldest son, Alvin is about three months younger than I am. The only other memory I have is her funeral. I was the only one in the family that could get there…”
Then there was Helen, whom Byron would live with briefly after his mother died. Finally there was Mabel. “I don’t remember much about my sisters because they were all older and grown and gone while I was growing up.”Byron would be the last surviving member of the Johnson siblings, and sadly the only one able to attend the funeral of each of his brothers and sisters.
In 1912, W.C. Handy wrote the first blues song ever published, “The Memphis Blues.” The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic, and Byron Johnson would, at the age of one, find his life in peril on a train ride from Arkansas to Illinois.
Chapter 2
The year was 1838, and the Principal People, as they called themselves, were being dragged from their homes, beaten and murdered, and about to start on one of the most arduous journeys in American history. They were the Cherokee Indians, and it was the beginning of the end of their nation, as they had known it…The Trail of Tears.
This journey would take them from Red Clay and Ross’s Landing, in Georgia and Tennessee, to Ft. Gibson in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Slaves from Alabama and Georgia would join this march, suffering the same indignities and brutality as the Cherokee. One of these slave families were the Johnsons. For reasons unknown they stopped in Arkansas and would eventually settle in Little Rock.
“We don’t know if someone got sick, or they found some work there, but they did stop there. My great, grandfather, Coffee Louis Johnson, actually bought some land in Alabama in 1866 during the Reconstruction,” remembered Jacquelyn Benton, Byron’s daughter.
Sadly, as was so often the case, any history or records of both Indian and slave families was lost or more than likely never recorded. This was certainly true of Byron’s family. There was gossip within the family that part of their lineage had in fact originated from a Southern general during the Civil War. When told of this Byron said, “Hold it right there! I don’t want to hear any of this.” Bowing to his wishes, it was dropped, but there is a natural curiosity that remains. Due to the contingencies of the time, nothing could ever be proved.
By 1842 the Johnson family had put down roots in Arkansas. In New York, with a bustling population of 250,000, a game was being played called Base Ball. Players would meet at Madison Square, where Fifth Avenue and Broadway meet at 23rd street, play this new game and argue about what rules to use. The game had recast itself into many versions, but what Union soldiers took with them into the Civil War was the New York version. After four long years of war, armies of the North and South scattered across the country taking Base Ball with them. It was a game Byron would learn to love and play.
“To tell you the truth it seems like I’ve played baseball all my life in one way or another,” Byron said warmly. “In my day every vacant lot would turn into a baseball field, so I started playing sandlot ball early. One of my first baseballs was a Coca-Cola top, the same top they put on bottles today. An old broom handle was usually my bat. When we’d hit that cap, it would bend the edges, and man, that top would take off. My next ball was made of balled up white paper. We’d take kite cord or twine and wind it around tight to make a ball. We had lots of fun.”
Baseball would become more important as Byron grew older, but while he was young, education and church were the governing factors in his life. His mother was emphatic about both. School was a must, and baseball should not, could not, and would not be played on Sundays.
Elizabeth Johnson was a woman of strong will and conviction. Being the daughter of a slave, she had plenty of grit and determination. “They said she was taking a train to Cairo, Illinois, to see my sister, Sadie,” Byron recalled. “She took me with her; I was about one year old. The train got robbed and Mama hid me under her petticoats so the robbers wouldn’t see me. Isn’t that something?”
Byron would also remember her standing behind the stove cooking, washing clothes in a big tub in the back yard, and working in the garden. But what he would remember most was her death. “She died on May 8th, 1921, I was nine years old. If you look on the calendar you’ll see that it was Mother’s Day. I had made a little greeting card at school, and I remember on that Friday the teacher said, ‘Don’t let your mother see your card until Mother’s Day.’ I held on to my card like the teacher said, but unfortunately for me my mother died around four in the morning…she never got to see my little card. Now, that hurt me, and I would have to say, affects me still. She never got to see my Mother’s Day card….”
The loss of his mother at such an early age would have a profound effect on Byron’s life. Part of the reason he always stayed on the straight and narrow path was because, even though she was dead, he knew in his heart he’d disappoint her if he strayed from her teachings.
“After my mother died, I remember all the people coming over cooking, cleaning the house, trying to help Papa. Somebody hung a black wreath on the front door…I didn’t like looking at it. I watched when the undertakers from Dubisson’s came to get her. After they brought her back I would go in the living room and just look at her. In those days the body stayed in the house until it was time for the funeral.
“I don’t remember the funeral, but I know I was there. It was at Wesley Chapel in Little Rock. I remember going by Philander Smith College (where Christine, his future wife, would go to college) on the long journey to the church. I also remember seeing my friend Kermit, standing out in the street as we went by. He just stared at me. Funny, I remember those things, but can’t remember the funeral itself. I just know that after my mother was gone, those were some sad, sad days in my life.”
The Black poet Langston Hughes had his first poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” published in 1921. The Negro National League, founded by Rube Foster, was scheduled to start play, while just nine years earlier; Ty Cobb had gone into the stands and savagely beat a heckler, Claude Lueker, for calling him a “half nigger.” Cobb’s teammates on the Detroit Tigers refused to play after his suspension, even though they had no use for him, other than as a ballplayer, because they said, “That it was too big an insult for any white man to bear.”
A few years later, Byron would get to hear Langston Hughes speak at his high school in Little Rock, and by his twenty-sixth birthday he would be playing in the Negro National League. There was also a tall, lanky pitcher beginning to make a name for himself in black baseball. Satchel Paige would not only go on to become, maybe the greatest pitcher in history, but one of Byron’s closest friends.
Chapter 3
“I think it was the women in the community, maybe from the church, who decided that Earl and I should leave,” Byron said. “I know Papa wasn’t crazy about separating the family, but Earl and I were the youngest, and I guess the women felt it would be best that we go live with our sisters after my mother’s death. So Earl went to Mabel in Helena, Arkansas, and I went to Helen in Kansas City, Missouri. I remember that Helen had a big, pretty house, and when you went out her front door, the porch led right down to the sidewalk where all the cars were shooting by…I didn’t like that.”
After his mother’s death, Byron felt displaced, lonely. He missed his dad, Earl, his friends at Stephens Elementary School, and the activities at White Memorial Methodist Church in Little Rock. He also missed his home; “I loved those woods, and I guess I knew just about every rock and tree out there.”
A few weeks went by, and although he was only nine years old, he’d had enough. It wasn’t that Helen wasn’t kind and caring; it was just too painful being away from home. “I wrote Papa a letter, and I told him if he didn’t come to get me I was coming home by myself. Later he told me, ‘Johnbrownit, I thought you might be fool enough to try it!’ So he came by train to get me. I was the happiest kid in the world to be going home with my dad. The first thing I did was write Earl a letter telling him what I’d done. It wasn’t long before Papa was getting another letter and taking another train trip. Earl met me grinning, and that’s how we got back together again.”
The next two years would be secure for Byron, as Papa did everything in his power to make up for the loss of Byron’s mother. He immersed himself in school, church and started playing lots of baseball with his brothers, and/or anyone else he could find to play with. Every field and vacant lot became a big league baseball diamond. Even at this early age, he was beginning to hone his skills as a smooth-fielding shortstop.
Baseball had come out of the 1919 Black Sox scandal riding the shoulders of one George Herman “Babe” Ruth. In 1921, he hit an astounding 59 home runs. Meanwhile, the Kansas City, Monarchs would go 50-31 and play, in essence, what was the first Negro League World Series against Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants. Negro League ball also had its first budding star, a big, strong, malicious man named Oscar Charleston. He would dominate Negro ball for many years, and he was compared to Babe Ruth for his thunderous home runs. It was also one of the most profound years in the history of the game, as the Supreme Court ruled baseball was a sport and not a business, therefore not subject to anti-trust laws. In 1923, President Warren Harding died of a heart attack, and African American choreographer Elida Webb set off an international dance craze when she introduced the Charleston in a New York City music and dance show, “Runnin’ Wild.”
A little over a year and a half after Byron’s mother died, his dad married Estella Goodwin. She was much younger than his dad, which immediately brought friction to the family.
“Papa married Estella Goodwin about two years after Mama died and my sisters stopped coming to see us. They were mad because of the marriage, and now I can understand why they would have been. Papa was almost thirty years older than Miss Stella, which didn’t make her a whole lot younger than my sister Sadie, or older than me. Miss Stella must have had some problems with my brothers too, because I can remember Papa telling them, ‘This is my home, and now its Stell’s home. You don’t have to love her, but if you stay here, you’re going to respect her.’ They stayed, but I know Miss Stella always felt that the family didn’t want her. After Miss Stella came, her cousin Bertie lived with us for a while too. I remember Bertie because of my cedar tree. I found a cedar tree in the woods one day and dug it up. When I brought it home, I planted it right in the front of the house, right where the coalhouse used to be. I was planning to grow birds in that tree, so I put some chicken wire around it. The tree would be the roost for the birds. I remember when Bertie saw that little tree she said, ‘When that tree gets high enough for its shadow to cover your grave, you gon’ die!’ I never did forget that, and I know some time later I saw that tree throwing out a shadow. Boy, I wondered if I should cut that sucker down…but I didn’t. The last time I was in Little Rock that cedar tree was still standing, and it had grown tall enough for its shadow to cover everybody’s grave.”
With discord at home and the ever-impending threat of death from the budding cedar tree, Byron sank his spikes into baseball. He loved the game, and the people who watched him play loved the way he played the game. There was only one problem, Sunday!
“The first team I played on was called The Bee’s. We’d have about fourteen or fifteen on the team. An old baseball player put the team together, and he was our first manager. A step up was playing on the men’s team, and I got to do that after I met Duncan Ingram. Duncan was a friend of my brother Earl’s and was always at our house. He was a carpenter and walked with a limp, but boy, could that man play baseball. I was about thirteen when I met him. He was about five years older than me, but he spent a lot of time with me and taught me what he knew about baseball. He was the shortstop for a team called Highline Sports. I wanted to play for them so bad I didn’t know what to do.
“One day something happened and Duncan couldn’t play, so he talked the manager into letting me fill in for him. I guess I did all right, because afterward I remember somebody telling Duncan, ‘Man, you better watch out, Mex gon’ take your job.’
“In Little Rock, everybody called me “Mex”. I used to hitch my little wagon to my goat, Billy Boy, and head out to the baseball field. I’d always be wearing a black hat that had a wide brim with red tassels all around it. My dad bought that hat for me, and I guess it kind of looked like a sombrero. People started calling me Mex, and the name stuck. Anyway, Highline Sports wanted me to play for them after I filled in for Duncan, but my people wouldn’t let me, because the team played on Sunday.”
Sunday was for church, religious reflection…not baseball. Byron would eventually solve this problem through sly tactics and prayer.
It was 1924, and Louis Armstrong made his first recording, “Everybody Loves My Baby.” J. Edgar Hoover became the newly appointed head of the Bureau of Investigation, which in 1935 became the FBI. He would remain in power for the next 48 years, during which time he’d conduct investigations and surveillance on people like, Eleanor Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr., all based on his analysis of what represented a threat to America. In Russia, Lenin died and the general secretary of the Communist Party, Joseph Stalin came to power.
This was also the year J.L. Wilkinson surpassed Rube Foster in the ever-changing landscape of black baseball. His Kansas City Monarchs were asserting themselves as the epitome of the Negro Leagues. Wilkinson had become exceedingly proficient at picking talent. Some of his more significant finds were second baseman Newt Allen, third baseman Newt Joseph, and an amazing young pitcher, “Bullet” Joe Rogan.
Little did a teenage shortstop in Little Rock, Arkansas know that several years later he would share some exciting, dramatic, and frightening moments with these very same men.
Chapter 4
“My first job was delivering papers, then I moved up to cutting grass, then I delivered milk. By the time I got to high school I started delivering groceries. My dad had always been a hard worker, and I only remember him being self employed. Most of his friends were self-employed too, brick layers, carpenters, trades like that. Through all those jobs though, he always found a way to stick a paintbrush in my hand. It seemed like I was always helping him paint a house. That was okay though, I think it made me a good worker…not afraid to work.”
Byron had only played baseball by the time he hit high school. Church, school, job, family and baseball (except Sundays) had been the extent of his life to that point. High school would be a new awakening, a broader horizon…football, girls, and baseball on SUNDAYS!
“When I got to high school, I started playing football. I went to Dunbar High School, named after the poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. I was in the class of 1931. There were only three boys and eighteen girls in the class…so you know we had a ball. Two of us boys were on the football team, and I was the quarterback. We never had new, or much, equipment to play with, but during my senior year, the white high school gave us their old uniforms… but no helmets. Since we didn’t have enough helmets, Robert Waugh and I played in our baseball caps.
“We had an excellent coach by the name of John Arthur Hibler. He taught us football from a scientific standpoint. I always compare Hibler to Big Long, my football coach at Wiley College. Big Long believed in getting over on your opponent by brute strength, so naturally he liked big men. Where, Hibler taught us to out think our opponent, and use psychology on them. Hibler also treated his quarterback like a king, so he never kicked me. You know in those days some coaches would beat up on their men. Big Long would kick All-Americans! Now that I think about it, maybe that had something to do with my wanting to be a quarterback. I know I didn’t want nobody beating on me, but, I was always Hibler’s main man.
“You know, it’s odd, but after all these years I can still remember some of the plays I’d call. Like if I called 5-2-3-4-1-4, the first number was the man carrying the ball, the third was the hole, and the last was the number the ball would be snapped on. I guess I had a unique cadence in the way I called the play, because years after my high school days, I was in Fort Smith at a party out in the yard when a fellow came by in a car, stopped in the middle of the street, got out and yelled something like, ‘Threee-two-four-five-twoooo!’ I turned around and looked, he said, ‘It’s me Mex.’ Now I didn’t know who ‘me’ was, but it turned out to be one of the players for Fort Smith we used to play against, and he remembered how I called those signals back in high school.
“Now, my people were never crazy about me playing football, so, I told Papa one day, ‘I know y’all don’t want me to play football, so if I can just play baseball on Sunday’s, I’ll give up football.’ Well, I must’ve been using Coach Hibler’s psychology on him, because I ended up doing both. That’s how I got to play baseball with Highline Sports…on Sundays.”
His first year in high school, 1929, the stock market crashed, setting off the Great Depression. It would take over a decade for the economy, and the country, to recover. By the time it was over, Byron would be winding down his career with the Satchel Paige All-Stars. Just two years earlier Babe Ruth had hit an astonishing sixty home runs. One year prior to that, Ty Cobb, the man who went into the stands and beat a man senseless, for being called a “half nigger,” retired. By 1930, Ruth would sign a contract for an even more astounding $80,000. The average salary for a major league player in 1930 was $7,000. On December 9, 1930, Rube Foster, the true founder of the Negro Leagues, died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-one. By Byron’s junior year there were four million unemployed people in the United States. Fortunately, his dad was not one of them. “It really didn’t affect us much. We always had something to eat, and a good place to sleep.”
The other two boys in Byron’s graduating class were Robert Waugh and Oscar “Horace” Berry. They went on to become All-American football players at Langston College. Byron had a chance to go with them, but opted to stay home. “I guess I was too much of a ‘Homeboy.’ I didn’t want to leave Little Rock.”
As a teenager growing up in a southern segregated city, Byron’s activities consisted of his sports, church activities and socials at school. They also went to lots of movies, lots of cowboy movies, on Saturday evenings. The staggering price of admission was five and ten cents, depending on the movie and time of day. “We always traveled as a group, ‘cause, if you got caught alone…well, you’d be in serious trouble.” Trouble was in the form of white packs of teenagers or the police.
“We had to sit upstairs at the movies, no doubt about it.” Those were the rules in the South and even the Midwest. Should a black person venture downstairs by accident or with intention, he or she was escorted unceremoniously out of the theater. But beyond all this there was an even more fetching reason to stay home…Christine Torrence. Byron and Christine had gone all through school together, attended the same church and social affairs. “I always made sure I walked with Christine’s group to and from church and school.” He was smitten with her from the beginning. Years later she would tell noted Negro League historian, Jay Sanford, “I really didn’t care about Byron…until he started playing quarterback on the football team in high school.”